VIII
In many sequestered places there are fine courses that the golfer in general knows little of. Demand of him suddenly that he shall tell you of a far-away seaside links where you may rest and play for a little while until the city calls you back, and by force of habit he will begin to murmur pleasantly about his Carnousties and his Gullanes and all the rest. They are excellent, most excellent; but we call for change, and where for the old wanderer is the change that is good enough? When he appeals to you, send him down in a cab to Paddington, bidding him take a ticket to Porthcawl, changing at Cardiff, for you may know that in the evening he will be happy, and that upon the next day the joy of life will have come again to a weary worker.
Porthcawl is a place that rests the man and gives balm to his troubled spirit. There is a fine links and the open Atlantic, and the Cymric spell is cast upon the sojourner—the feeling that one has relapsed from the severity of complicated civilisation for a little while to the peace and the simplicity of old Gwalia, the land of the real Briton. One day I was turning the pages of a small guide-book to South Wales, when I noticed that the topographer, in writing of Porthcawl, said somewhat complainingly that the coast round about there was “extremely desolate.” Beyond hinting that there were more rocks about it than were good for any well-ordered coast, he preferred not to go into details. He was describing things for the benefit of that curious person who is generally called “the tourist,” and he seemed to feel this was no place for him to linger with his charge. So in apologetic manner he gave his reader a small assortment of the usual kind of facts as an excuse for having mentioned Porthcawl at all. He told him, for example, that the novelist, R. D. Blackmore, who was a word scene-painter of breadth and effectiveness, placed the action of his “Maid of Sker” in this region of Porthcawl, and if he had had consideration for the golfer he would have added that there are landmarks of the story to be seen from all parts of the links. The tourist was further informed as to a local church, was acquainted with the curious fact that here there is a well of fresh water which rises and falls in a puzzling manner according to the going out and coming in respectively of the tide, and was supplied with some useful and indispensable knowledge about the character of the shipping with which the port had to deal. And then, as it was felt that the tourist must not tarry longer in such a place, he was hurried on to some other, where there were piers and bands, and a variety of historic remains for contemplation and study in serious moments.
Generally the requirements of the golfer are in inverse ratio to those of the tourist, and it is tolerably safe to predict that when a coast is described as “extremely desolate,” it represents a fine piece of golfing country. It is one of the good things of golf that it has come into our civilisation to use up all utterly barren and waste tracts of coastwise land, and that generally the more barren and waste the better they are for golf. Are not some of the best links there are in Britain situated on coasts that are to the non-golfing mind, uneducated to the beauty and charm of testing, full-blooded and yet scrupulously fair holes, quite naked of all attraction? And what an excellent arrangement of circumstances it is! The neighbourhood of Prestwick is sometimes by way of being “boomed” as a health resort, a place that affords a fine tonic to the lungs, and I believe the claim is well justified; but not all people would describe this spot in Ayrshire as being “interesting,” and there is certainly no kind of relation between the quality of the coast scenery and the inestimable grandeur, from the golfing point of view, of the Cardinal, the Himalayas, and above all of the glorious seventeenth, the Alps. And consider Sandwich. No tourist of discrimination has been seen, or will be, on these reclaimed wastes that have already given us one championship course, and lately a new links, which is of superlative quality. And the “extremely desolate” coast at Porthcawl which did not please our guide-book man, is found on acquaintance to be an excellent example of Nature’s impressionist seascape work, with savage rocks abounding. Even the name of Porthcawl smacks of coves and pirates, of breezes and big seas. Porthcawl sticks out so that there is nothing in the world between it and the United States of America except the Atlantic Ocean. Its golf links are on the very margin of the sea, contiguous to those black, sharp rocks—so near, indeed, that a really badly-hit ball may sometimes be sent dancing at all kinds of fantastic angles from one to another, until it comes to rest in an inaccessible place whence it will never be disturbed. Sometimes in the severer seasons, the sea, with the full, unbroken force of the Atlantic behind it, will be sent smashing along over the rocks, and even over the golf links too, until some of the bunkers are laden with salt water. Porthcawl is fine, and it is a fine change, and there are holes on the course that have a boldness and a vigour that stir the pulse of the golfing man. We play over the wall and up the hill to the turn, and there is South Wales and its ocean frame spread out at our feet, making us linger upon a glorious scene and sigh a little as we drive down the hillside to the first hole in.